10 Tips for preparing your next textbook edition

Steven Barkan, a professor of sociology at the University of Maine, and the author of five textbooks and one tradebook, shares the following ten tips for preparing your next edition:

1. The worst is over, but much yet is to be done. The first edition of a textbook takes much more time than any later editions, so the worst is over as you begin to prepare the next edition. However, the next edition can take much more time that one might expect. Research, data, and references must all be updated. Regardless of how long you expect the preparation of the next edition to take, it will probably take longer. The good news is that it will still take much less time than the first edition.

Treat textbook authoring like a business: Create a home office just for authoring

Treating your authoring like a business means creating a home office just for authoring, said Robert Christopherson, author of the best-selling U.S. and Canadian geography textbook, Geosystems.

“Prepare your home office and writing studio as if it were a formal business,” he said.

Christopherson had a cabinet maker build a full desk, elevated bookcases, and lateral filing cabinets for storing his preparation files, into his home office. The desk takes up three walls, and in the corner — so no space is lost — there’s a 36-inch lazy susan for storing supplies. The bookcases are elevated to allow room for a 14-foot long cork board for tagging items on. “Around the computer, the cabinet maker built a large theater-organ like console so that the computer screen is surrounded by a workspace where things can be posted and set,” he said. “I work on big broadsheets a lot of